DOS printing
If you're running an MS-DOS program in Windows XP, you may be wondering how to print. DOS programs usually print directly to LPT 1 or LPT 2. This is fine if you have a local printer attached, but what if you want to use a network printer that's attached to a different computer? You need to map an LPT port to the shared network printer.
The procedure
- Click Start and select Run
- Type cmd to open a command prompt window
- Click OK
- Then type: net use lpt[port number]\\[print server name]\[printer share name]/persistent:yes
- Press Enter
- Type exit to get out of the command window
In the example, for port number, put in the number of the printer port that you want to map (for example, lpt1 or lpt2, with no space between "lpt" and the number). For printer server name, put in the name of the computer to which the network printer is attached. For printer share name, put in the name by which the printer is shared on the network.